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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

The main issue is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect , but what gets missed when people use the Halo Effect term is that when the performance of someone attractive or charismatic is only average, we blame them for having "deceived" us, when it was our own bias toward them that caused the disappointment.

Criticizing the "privilege" of the attractive as a means to de-legitimize them personally seems to double down on this error and seduce people who have the conceit of blaming others for their own biases into further self-justification, imo.

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I didn't take the article as seeking to "de-legitimize them". Having privilege isn't a sin (unless you acquired it through some ill means, but that's not even possible in most cases).

Privilege is nothing more than a social factor to be aware of, both for the haver of privilege whose perspectives might be warped by their experiences, and for the social systems (like the justice system, mentioned in the article) who at least in theory are trying to be objective about things.

Don't take it so personally. Privilege doesn't make you a bad person, and raising awareness of it is a good thing.

A lot of people would argue the idea of privilege is not a neutral or valueless observation at all, and more precisely, it resembles a new original sin invented by a secular movement instead of a religious one. Critical frameworks that rely on it earn extra scrutiny. I recommend taking that personally.

I think "a lot of people" is an over-statement, I don't think an intrinsically broken moral judgement made by a minority of people should be allowed to delegitimize the real issue, and I don't think the OP was talking about anything but the real, legitimate issue.

Privilege is nothing but an acknowledgement that some people have advantages in life that they didn't earn. There is no possible world in which it doesn't exist, and almost by definition its holders can't usually be blamed for holding it. But we can a) take steps as a society to decrease its impact in various ways, and b) see it as a reality-check on social-darwinist or meritocratic thinking.

There is no real or legitimate issue about how attractiveness is somehow "unearned," as though it should be earned, I can only presume through labour, and probably struggle, though it is not clear from whom one might earn it. Perhaps the forces of history inevitably closing in on a dying class? The idea of privilege is an artifact of that ideology and it's the defining attribute of an antagonist. Is it useful? It is a tool that is applicable in some limited instances, but applying it to the alleged "privilege" of beauty seems like that old adage of when all you have is a hammer and sickle, everything looks like a kulak.

The OP gave a clear example of how awareness of this bias could help real people:

> In a meta analysis of the role of attractiveness in criminal sentencing, it was found that unattractive people received 120–305 percent longer sentences than attractive people.

So coming up with a way to factor physical appearance out of courtroom proceedings could dramatically improve justice system outcomes. There's nothing hand-wavy or insidious here. I really can't figure out where your hangup is, and I think I'm going to stop engaging with this conversation because it feels like a waste of time and energy.

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